Pre-OS X Malware

As part of an ongoing Apple security timeline project, I’ve finally got around to putting up some information about the malware that affected versions of Mac OS prior to OS X, so it’s largely of academic interest. Though I do have an iBook that runs 9.2 around here somewhere.

This information is extracted with very minor edits from version 2.x of the ‘Viruses and the Macintosh’ FAQ which I haven’t updated in about 11 years. It doesn’t include pre-Mac stuff like Elk Cloner, but I’ll include some info about that on the timeline page (though not necessarily as a priority!). The timeline is very much a work in progress, but something will be up in the next day or two, if time permits. It will reproduce some information from the Threat Description page, but should be more comprehensive. For a start, it’ll backtrack to some of the stuff that was active when I was working in a different area of security and didn’t have time to administer the Mac Virus site regularly.

It will focus primarily on Mac issues in the first instance, but I’ll check back on iOS stuff when time allows.